Distinguishing whether Alexievich's works truly belong to Bakhtinian polyphonic novels, correcting the academic tendency to apply the polyphonic label while neglecting monologic and documentary traditions

1 The Relationship Between Authorial Consciousness and Narrator Consciousness

Discusses the complex interaction between authorial consciousness and narrator consciousness in Alexievich's "Voices of Utopia" series. The works employ extensive oral testimony from witnesses, creating a superficial structure of juxtaposed multiple voices that appears to conform to Bakhtin's polyphonic theory; however, through thematic selection, material editing, and narrative arrangement, the author consistently makes her personal anti-war stance and reflection on Soviet history the value core governing the entire text. While narrators retain subjectivity, their voices have been objectified to corroborate and reinforce the author's central consciousness. Opposing or "unreliable" narratives in the text likewise serve to highlight the reliability of the author's values. The multiple voices do not constitute equal dialogue but are integrated into a unified semantic field controlled by the implied author, thereby dissolving the independence of consciousness and value pluralism required for polyphonic novels.

2 The Absence of Ideological Confrontation and the Rupture of Internal Dialogue

Discusses how Alexievich's works take disaster and war emotional history as their object, with narrators serving merely as rememberers rather than thinkers; multiple monologues are unified through the author's moral-ideological filter, negating dissent and forming a monologic structure of monism; superficial, submissive dialogue between interviews and narrators severs the unfinished internal confrontation required for polyphony.

3 Polyphonic Writing and the Latent Monologic System

Discusses how Alexievich's works are widely regarded as polyphonic writing yet conceal a monologic system. Academia employs concepts such as "polyphonic technique" and "chorus of voices" to affirm their polyphonic characteristics, but mostly uses "polyphony" in a musical rather than Bakhtinian sense. Research indicates that the author, through a "concert" under unified direction, incorporates multiple voices into a closed narrative space, forming coherent monologue with locked value meanings, departing from Bakhtin's emphasis on the open, independent, and non-merging spirit of polyphony, ultimately constructing a monologic system dominated by the author's values.

4 The Controversy Over Creative Genre

Discusses the diverse positioning of Alexievich's creative genre in Russian academic circles, with focus on the debate between fiction and non-fiction, documentary and literary qualities. The 1987 *Literary Encyclopedia Dictionary* classified documentary literature as fiction; subsequent research proposed designations such as "documentary novel," "witness novel," and "polyphonic confessional novel," while others categorized her work as "new non-fiction" or "journalism-fiction hybrid." The boundary between documentary and literary qualities has been repeatedly considered: Gulenya views her as inheriting the documentary tradition; Demaeva emphasizes the "film-to-paper" documentary method; Saini studies "documentary poetics"; while Okorokov and others question documentary quality, advocating for literary quality. Genre origins trace back to Belarusian founder Goretsky, whose *Notes from Imperialist Wars* combining documents and fiction established the documentary-documentary style; Adamovich continued and developed the oral interview method, which Alexievich inherited, presenting life truth through "interview + oral testimony." Although she draws upon Dostoevsky's themes of "little people" and "innocent suffering," her dialogue lacks Socratic truth debate and possesses monologic coloring; her protagonists are not thinkers, and dialogue does not pursue ideological generation, thus differing essentially from polyphonic novels. The author's multiple identities (journalist, writer, sociologist, etc.) further complicate and enrich genre classification.

5 Conclusion

Notes that Alexievich uses monologic consciousness to govern multiple voices, creating a non-polyphonic monologic world.